What did you do in the garden today?

[gtaus]

my chickens and geese found the way to eat tomato leaves. luckily never had any problems. I guess if they ate it on a daily basis that would harm them.

Quantity matters from what I read. Humans, and many other animals, can eat something bad and vomit it out of their systems. Not so with chickens. So, eating plants that are toxic to them can make them sick or kill them before they clear it out of their system. Best to have those plants separated from the chickens.

 

[gtaus]

Video about saving seeds:

https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/dis...dening-journal-episode-36-saving-garden-seeds

Thanks for the link. I liked the part about saving tomato seeds. I think I will try that this year with some Roma tomatoes. Maybe cherry tomatoes, too, but I think I still have some of those seeds left over from this year.

 

[igorsMistress]

Good afternoon all. I did some picking in the garden this morning. I picked up the rest of the butternut squash. There are 8 total. Small but well shaped. After two years of absolutely no squash, this makes me happy. I picked more cherry tomatoes and a few SM tomatoes. I got 2 from the nightshade garden and they were bigger and more robust looking than the ones in the big garden. I also picked 2 jalapeños and some more lima beans. I have a brandywine that is finally starting to ripen. Out of three plants I only have 6 tomatoes. I won’t be growing them again. Very disappointing and a waste of garden space. This has been a rough gardening year with all the rain, so I’m happy I’m getting something of a harvest. Still waiting for more corn to develop. There are still plenty of ears on the stalks, I’m hoping dry sunny weather will help. Still no sign of summer squash developing. There’s no shortage of pollinators just a shortage of the female flowers. Today’s haul.
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Nice haul Sarah. My mom only has male flowers on her squash too. She’s not too happy.

 

[Sally PB]

I try to wait until my tomatoes are ripe on the plants before I pick them. I'm not up for picking tomatoes before they are ripe.

The longer we leave them on the vine the more tempting they are to bugs, chipmunks, squirrels and any other hungry critter poking around for a snack. Picking them when they are super ripe also runs the risk of them going bad quickly if you don’t use them up quickly once you do pick them.

In my case, the groundhogs get my tomatoes! Why can't they just eat 2 or 3, instead of taking a bite out of 25??

 

[gtaus]

@CNJ, I bought a couple of those 27-gallon plastic totes from Menards with a few extra lids today. My plan, when I get the time, is to make a sub-irrigated planter of the lid and tote as I mentioned before. You stated that it would be too much work to cut out the lid, compared to just cutting a hole in the bottom of one tote and putting it into a second tote. Well, I plan on trying to cut the lid with either my jig saw, multi tool, or just a razor knife and test it out myself to see how hard it is. If/when I finish the project, I'll try to get back to you, if you are interested in my little experiment.

For those who may be interested, the 27-gallon totes are still on sale at Menards....

The idea is to use the plastic totes to make a DIY EarthBox container. I am going to try to use this method uploaded on YouTube...

 

[Sally PB]

I have so much garden clean up to do. September is harvest and clean up month, so I bought myself a day's reprieve by doing other things. I was very productive, though, so it was a good day.

 

[jerryse]

I was watching a guy make fertilizer from chopped up weeds in water. He uses the water. Something to consider as I have a bunch of chopped weeds. I have a fish emulsion fertilizer at the cabin. Should be ready to use when I return.

 

[akroberts1085]

I picked quite a few cherry tomatoes today and to my surprise I had gone out to give my girls their snacks and found an egg. It's rather small even though I have RIR girls but it's a start.

 

[saysfaa]

Today, I watered the vines struggling with the soil virus (we think), and or squash borers. So the cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash.

And picked four and a half quarts of current tomatoes, about two bushel of standard tomatoes (still in the truck), way too many eggplants, and three zucchini, and enough green peppers for a big pan of stuffed peppers. Also, a dozen apples from one tree and about a third of a bushel from another tree, and a heaping quart of wild grapes (all still in the truck).

All but a few of the standard tomatoes are green - as in about half are barely yellowish and about half are light orange. I would rather wait until they are with a two or three days of being ripe but the woodchucks would destroy them. Even so, the woodchuck chewed on dozens of them.

 

[Smokerbill]

I picked a couple more zucchinis today and decided to pick all the tomatoes I saw that were breaking and let them ripen inside. Plus a couple little cukes from my pickling cucumber vines and some more turnip greens. Planned on having a salad tonight for supper.

But a steak is starting to sound a lot better. I've been eating a lot of eggs lately and feel the urge to eat some beef protein.